His Butler, Knight
by MissHikaHaru
Summary: Sebastian Michaelis, contracted to an intriguing new master, finds himself in attendance at Cross Academy. Well, as a demon, turning into a teenager is no hard puzzle for him. However, a sole member of the Night Class seems to be a counterfeit piece that he just can't fit together - something about her fascinates him, and the demon finally discovers quite how hard love can be.
1. Contract

Soft white petals fluttered through the snow-swirled night sky. A bell was tinkling quietly, as a thin woman with long white hair trod through a dimly lit room. Glittering tear tracks lined her pale cheeks, mauve eyes glowing slightly red. Shizuka Hiou looked morosely around the gloom, three bodies sprawled on the floor around her bare feet, pools of blood slowly oozing from their mangled frames.

One of them, the boy of thirteen, with blood caked into his white-blonde hair, was crying. His body shook uncontrollably, trembling with his tears of rage and pain. Through his blurred amethyst eyes, Zero saw the lifeless bodies of his parents; their mouths hanging open, their wide eyes reflecting the dying light of a few sputtering candles. His mother's face, so pretty and bright in life, was now bloody and so mutilated Zero's stomach wrenched sickeningly. There was a Hunter's sword still clutched in her limp fingers, the blade all but shattered away.

The other lay as it had been when the final blows were struck, tightly holding to her husband's. Zero turned his head, not looking at his father. He couldn't bring himself to lose the memory of him, lose it to this image of a distorted corpse. The Pureblood walked away, her bloodstained hands clasped lightly behind her back, and the bell tinkled at her waist. Zero raised his head, glowering at her, to see her looking at him with a sullen expression. Her tall, slender figure was silhouetted in the doorway, the thin curves of her body perfectly defined. Then a second, smaller shadow appeared beside her.

"Run…" Zero whispered, weakly reaching a hand across the bloodied floorboards towards them. "Run away…" The boy beside Shizuka didn't move, his pale face spattered with blood. Zero's eyes filled with tears, as he saw the malevolent smile of the woman of the blossoms. "Ichiru…" She reached a bloodied hand to his brother's shoulder, and he saw her long fingers flex. "If you hurt Ichiru...I will k-kill you...!"

The two shadows moved away and out of sight, and Zero's head collapsed onto the floor. He was shaking with the violent force of his sobs, the pain from his neck splitting open every vein in his body. Blackness ate away at his mind, and he slipped into unconsciousness. The darkness swirled around him, consuming his very mind as the muffled sound of wings flapped and circled about his ears. It was as if Death itself had come flying towards him with his great wings of bone and black feather pounding like willow branches, skeletal face grinning as his long Scythe reached for his soul.

"You can wake up, you know," he said, voice much calmer than Zero had ever imagined the Reaper could have possessed. Slowly, rather uncertainly, the boy allowed his silver eyes to open. He lay, hovering in nothingness, suspended like the moon on the fisherman's string amid a vast expanse of dimly flashing lights and a sea of soft black feathers. Zero sat up, shivering; as he hugged his arms around him, he found that he was naked. Quickly, he drew his legs to his chest, staring around in dread. "How innocent..."

"Who's there?" Zero called, breaths forming an icy fog before his frightened eyes. "Wha-what's going on? Tell me, who's there? Oh, _please_, tell me who you are!" He heard quiet laughter, but no figure appeared before him. "Show yourself!" he cried, agitated at the ridicule this unseen person called upon him in this place.

"I've been here this whole time," the voice said, and Zero turned his head to see a blackened and burnt branch protruding from thin air in the darkness behind him. Perched upon it was a raven, sleek and beautiful and cruel, with eyes that glimmered with a dark crimson luster. "Now you see me..." The bird flapped its great black wings, and it was enveloped in a cloud of dark feathers. A moment later it was gone, and Zero was left staring around to catch sight of it. "...and now you don't," the voice sounded from all around, echoing through the vast expanse of emptiness.

That voice was cool and ever-so etched with amusement, and Zero sensed the self-satisfied smirk the lips it belonged to assumed. It angered him, but also made his heart thump louder in fear.

"What do you want with me?" he asked in an almost petulant voice.

"I've been watching you for some time, you know." Zero felt something sharp and thin upon his shoulder, and he turned his gaze to the clawed scales of the raven's legs as it sat upon his skin. "You and your brother. A shame, what happened to him..."

"Shut up!" the boy cried, trying to swat the bird away but it only dug in its claws and ruffled its wings in a dignified sort of way; though its claws had pierced his skin, Zero could not feel the pain there should have been. Indeed, though his body was bloodstained and bruised, nothing ached or agonized him. But that didn't stop the tear to come rolling down his cheek at the unbearable thought of what that Pureblood witch could have done. "Ichiru..."

"It's all because of him that I'm here," the raven said, and Zero felt the strange creature nuzzle its beak against his silver-white head. He frowned suspiciously, eyes rolling to watch it with beady expectation; his vision was slightly blurred by the threat of tears, but he wiped his eyes as he felt himself question the raven's meaning. "I wish to form a contract with you, Zero Kiriyu."

Zero's eyes widened.

"How do you know my name...?"

"I know everything about you," came the reply, and the bird flapped from his shoulder to hover before his face, razor-sharp beak a mere inch from the boy's thin, pale-skinned nose, "and I know what is in your heart." Zero became transfixed by those scintillating red eyes, the rubies boring deep into the amethyst. They began to glow with a bright light, and it was as if a film had begun to play in those large round irises. Zero saw everything. He saw two tiny boys tucked in the crook of a mother's arm, saw them playing together in the snow. He wanted to look away, to draw his eyes from this strangely horrible sight, but he could not. "I know your every smile..."

The boy saw himself and his twin, laughing together as they received praise from a man with matted black hair, a patch covering one eye. Zero gripped his bare shoulders, nails clawing his skin.

"...I know what you feared most..."

There he was, Ichiru, in bed with fever running high, hardly able to breath and slipping in and out of dangerous consciousness. His skinny chest roses and fell rapidly, the numerous pills having no effect but worsening his condition. Zero had fallen asleep alone that night, crying.

"...every tear you have shed..."

His lip trembled, and his cheeks became hot as he felt the salty beads slipping from his eyes. Words could not describe now what he saw, but it became harder and harder to pull away, desperate to escape this agonizing recollection this ungodly creature was now forcing him to endure. "All of it..." Zero's chest contorted, breaths becoming scarce as he heard his parent's screams echoing throughout his head, bellowing his name as their blades cut through the falling snow at _her_ - the Sakura Queen of the Purebloods. "...has been in waiting for this day."

His teeth bared, Zero clenched his eyes shut and leapt to his feet.

"_Stop it!_" he roared, his voice reverberating in the never-ending silence. He clutched at his hair, threatening to rip it form his scalp as he stamped his feet and tried to eradicate the sounds of their voices by bellowing over them. But the louder that he screamed the harder it hurt, their faces - mutilated, defiled, bloody - flickering before his eyes like shadows cast by a candle in the wind. "_MAKE IT STOP!_"

"I know the single desire of your quivering soul," the raven said in a gentle voice, and it resumed its place upon his left shoulder. Zero was quivering in rage and grief, tears burning his eyes. There was an uneasy silence, broken only by the muffled sobs of the young boy. "Revenge."

Zero let his hands slip from his head, and he looked at bird beside his face. For a moment he said nothing at all.

"Yes..." he whispered, voice rather hoarse and afraid.

"I can help you to achieve it."

"H...How...? You're just a bird, aren't you?"

"I am not a being of any common rate," the raven replied, its beady red eyes fixed upon Zero's, "for I am the creature that dwells in the darkest shadows of the world in waiting for those delicious souls who have one sole craving they are willing to do anything to achieve." Zero's brows furrowed, ever so slightly. "I am a demon, you see."

The demon-bird let out a quiet caw of laughter as he watched the boy's mouth fall open.

"A demon...?" Zero breathed, drawing away his eyes and staring down at his hands - they were shaking. He clenched them into fists. "Then you're no better than a vampire. I hate them, and I hate you. You'll promise me my revenge, but I bet you'll only try to find ways to swindle me and any other innocent human along with me."

"I am unlike the others of my race," the demon said, in a voice that seemed so wretched that Zero almost questioned his own prejudice - almost.

"And what is it you want from me, exactly?" he asked, trying to keep the snap away from his tone. "You say everything has led to this day, and for what? A contract of some sort and revenge? I don't believe you."

"As a demon, I can do whatever it is that my Master - he whom I have formed a contract with - commands me to." Zero paused, considering this, but he did not relinquish hold of his suspicion. "I would even shoot the moon from the very sky if you wished it."

"Why would I want the moon?"

"Why indeed, when it is so clear your heart wishes for something so much more intimate?" the demon purred, and Zero bristled. "That _is _what you want, isn't it?"

"It is," he said shortly, voice cold.

"Is it your wish to form a contract with me, for myself to become your ever-loyal companion for the coming times, to achieve your heart's desire? I must tell you, now, that this deal comes at the price of your very own soul."

Zero fell silent, and was so for a very long time, and the demon respectfully waited - he'd lived many millennia, so it was no hardship to wait for a boy such as this to ponder his choices. It was true, Zero now wanted nothing more than to kill Shizuka. She, who had destroyed everything, deserved to die in a way more terrible than that of his parent's murder. And yet...the price of his own soul? To renounce hold of the very thing that made him human, what segregated him from the horrors of the vampire scum. But then, his face flashed before Zero's eyes.

Ichiru... she had _touched_ him, defiled him, and by now...what? What had she done to him? _No matter the cost_, he told himself, _she wouldn't get away with her sins_.

"I wish to form a contract."

"Oh?"

"Don't seem so surprised," Zero muttered, "after you sought me out just to hear those words. But I'm ready."

"Is it your wish to join with me until your desires are appeased?"

"It is."

"Are you prepared to surrender of your soul to me upon completion of our contract?"

Zero closed his eyes, bowing his head the merest fraction. _For Ichiru, I would do anything..._

"I am."

Suddenly, Zero felt a blinding, white-hot pain sear through him like a deadly poison. The raven flew from his shoulder, blood dripping from its claws. He had raked through Zero's skin, creating four long gashes in a strange design that now burned violet as lines began to etch themselves like a pattern from the wound. He slumped back, and now he was falling through the nothingness, hair whipping his face as everything began to twitch in and out of focus before his eyes. The pain was agonizing, as if he were being ripped apart from his throat. He saw the demon diving after him, wings clapped tight to its sleek body as it sped after him through the flurry of black feathers.

"Name me so I can serve you."

"I don't want to name you!" Zero cried, eyes clenching shut against the venomous pain of his neck - little did he know it, but the agony he was experiencing was the demon's sealing wax of the sacramental sign of his contract, unique to every human-demon pair. "I couldn't force something upon something with it's own mind and feelings!"

The demon was surprised, for never before had a human been so considerate.

"Then you may call me by the name I was last appointed; Sebastian Michaelis, under the Earl Ciel Phantomhive."

"Then you can be Sebastian, if you want it to be your name, or else you can name yourself!"

Once more, the demon couldn't help but feel himself falter; what a strange human this one had so turned out to be. He'd never been allowed before to name himself, nor asked whether he liked the name he'd be given. Now that he thought about it, as he soared after his newest Master, he had grown strangely attached to his previous name, and he found his lips tweaking in the very slightest curve of a smile.

"And so I shall be Sebastian; call out to me, now, and cry for your deepest wish," he commanded.

"Sebastian Michaelis!" Zero cried, and his descent began to slow as the demon was enveloped in a shroud of rustling black feathers. "I ask of you now, in exchange for my soul - help me avenge my family, and kill the sole person who led my life to such misery."

The feathers began to dissipate, and a black-nailed hand emerged from the black cloud to lock long fingers with his own.

"Yes," Sebastian Michaelis replied, and Zero saw the shine of black hair against pallid skin as he slipped into unconsciousness, "my Young Lord."


	2. Friend

"Master?"

The boy slurred ineffectually in his sleep, only vaguely hearing the cool voice as it called him.

"Young master..."

A hand touched his shoulder, and Zero feebly stirred as he let loose a drowsy breath. The black-nailed fingers clenched just a little, starting to shake the young boy from his already overlong slumber.

"Ichiru..." Zero mumbled, and the hand upon his shoulder loosened slightly. "Five more minutes..."

"Poor thing..." Sebastian whispered, straightening up as he turned away from Zero's body beneath the covers. His deep red eyes surveyed the room, Zero's own, and lingered almost sadly upon the empty bed of his late twin; a large pile of assorted pills and ointments sat upon the cabinet beside its head, a glass of water there as if ready to be drunk at any moment. With a melancholy sort of sigh, the demon raised his right hand and inspected the new Seal engraved into his pale skin; how very different it seemed than the one he had grown so used to, that rounded purple pentagram surrounded by stars. Though he knew he mayn't speak so openly about his previous Master, the demon had grown oddly attached to young Ciel Phantomhive; what a pity, he thought, that Ciel refused Sebastian's denial to take his soul - it seemed apparent, now, that the demon's affections and admiration were only half-heartedly reciprocated (if at all).

Hearing a dreary yawn and the rustle of blankets behind him, Sebastian turned his sleek black head and fixed those crimson eyes on the one he now obliged his Master; though it might be hard, all memory of the child-Earl was now unnecessary - unwanted - in his new state of employment; Ciel _had_ been gone for near a century, so one might have thought such a person would be quite forgotten.

"Master?" the demon intoned, in that surprisingly gentle voice.

Zero slowly opened those profound grey-lavender eyes, sparkling in the light of the snow-swirled morning to come streaming though a crack in the dusky blue curtains.

"Where am I...?" he breathed, sitting up cautiously and allowing the covers to fall down upon his lap. Instinctively, the boy turned his gaze in the direction his brother's bed had always been; his heart gave a throbbing twinge as he saw it was empty, and the amethysts in his eyes dulled as if they were no more than common stone. A tear pricked at the corner of his vision. It was something unfathomable to him, that only yesterday Ichiru had woken him up with that frail but loving embrace that only his arms could bring, and now - for the first time in his life - he had woken up... completely alone.

But he was not alone.

"You're Sebastian... aren't you?" he asked as his eyes fell to the tall figure clad entirely in black beside him. He saw that pale, but also extremely handsome, face curl in a thin-lipped smile.

"I am Sebastian," the demon conceded, bending to his knees in a bow so refined that no soul of the Victorian court could have executed it greater, "as you have willed me to be, my Young Lord."

The boy could not help but frown at his strange new title.

"I'm no lord," he said, pushing back the covers and getting to his feet. Sebastian looked up, a small hint of surprise in his rosewood gaze. "I wish you wouldn't call me that, because it's something I'd never dream of being thought of to be - you make it sound like I'm some Pureblood scum..." He clenched his fists at the name, thinking only of that long silver hair as it billowed though the falling snow. "That's something I couldn't ever stand."

Feeling a dull sort of pain, he put his left hand to the skin of his neck; a strange warmth seemed to pulsate at his touch.

"You _are _my Lord, to me," Sebastian said quietly, raising his right hand for the boy to see the Seal of their contract. "That mark on your neck is what constitutes that title - if I could not address you with the proper honorific, then..." A dull kind of smirk lined the demon's lips. "...what kind of butler would I be?"

Oh, how long ago had it been since last he had said that? How many memories it brought back to him now, and it seemed to strike him how very much this boy before him reminded him of the Earl Phantomhive. There was something about those eyes, so very pure and innocent - but so very hard and cold. Zero was a good deal taller than Ciel had been, though seemingly just as arrogant and confident in word as the latter; judging by the considerable difference in physical size and strength, Zero seemed a good deal more likely to be able to dress himself properly than his previous Master; it was difficult for him to suppress a grin as he remembered how Ciel had been unable even to lace his own shoes properly when once he had been indisposed to do so. _But, then again..._

"Butler?" Zero repeated, frowning still more. "I never called for a _butler_. What good would it do me? And besides, I _hate_ tea."

_...how very unlike Ciel he also seemed._

"Then what role would you wish me to assume, Master?" the demon inquired, smiling pleasantly down at the pale silverette with ever so slight amusement.

"Don't _call_ me that," the boy snapped, "I'm not your Master! I'm not anyone's Master! I'm just..." He sank down onto the edge of his bed, staring angrily at his knees. "I'm just a boy..." At that, his gaze seemed to soften a little. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffed, turning up his head. "I don't like it when people make me sound better than anyone else," he said in a low voice, fixing his gaze with Sebastian; rubies shining down into the amethyst. "My own Master, Yagari, taught me and my brother... He - Ichiru was born quite sickly, but he wouldn't let that get him down; not ever. I loved my brother; everyone knew I was stronger than he was, just from looking. They always praised me for my training, and never even patted Ichiru on the back for trying... Even our parents..." His fingers clenched weakly on the bedcovers, and he sighed as he bowed his head again. "I _hate it_ when people make me seem more important," he muttered darkly. "It was only Ichiru who knew me for just plain Zero..."

Zero swallowed dryly.

"He was my only friend..."

"Is that what you wish for, now?" Sebastian asked, bending so that now he knelt before the boy perched on the mattress. "A friend?"

Zero looked up, connecting eyes with the one he was bound to. He felt his eyes prickle, just a little, and he lowered them once again.

"...Yes..."

The demon smiled, those scarlet eyes glowing like warm wine.

"With my parents dead and gone..." Zero said in a low whisper, "and Ichiru..." His voice trailed away, unable to bear the thought of what could have possibly happened to his brother. "I don't want a butler - I don't want a servant - not a being only there to appease me when I give orders; that's something I simply couldn't do. How could I just tell someone with their own mind and feelings to do what I want them to? I think it's despicable." Sebastian couldn't help but smile; there was something undeniably charming about this boy, who was so very compassionate for any other creature - excluding vampires, of course, but I suppose they went without saying. But, then again, Sebastian thought, had this boy not - himself - compared demons such as he was to be quite as terrible as vampires themselves? Certainly, Zero Kiriyu was a strange boy, to say the least. "All I could really ask for now is..."

"A friend," Sebastian finished. Zero nodded, almost feebly, before raising his head. As he did so, his eyes widened in surprise; for now the demon had grown visibly younger, more youthful by almost fifteen years. Now he looked almost Zero's age, perhaps just a little older, just over fourteen at most. Those crimson eyes were bright with the reckless grin of youth, even a few freckles dappling his pale cheeks. His sleek black hair was a little curlier and more unkempt, though still neater by far than Zero's head of silver thatch. "And so I shall be - every year you grow, until the fulfilment of your soul's desire, then so shall I. Zero Kiriyu, I will be your friend from this moment on."

Zero seemed stuck for words, barely even able to comprehend what he now saw. His mouth hung ajar for a good while, eyes simply fixated in bewilderment and horror.

"How... how did you..."

"If I couldn't alter my appearance for sake of your solace," Sebastian grinned, his voice higher and more young than it had been before, "well... what kind of friend would I be?"


End file.
